Down in Mexico
by Mopps
Summary: Fallout kink meme fill. Charlie's got something to show, and Raul won't be able to unsee it. Neither will the unwanted audience. Lap dancing, death, and a sweet afterglow of angst.


_Original fill request was for a lap dance based on the one in Death Proof, and something involving Charlie just popped into my head when I read it. Song is 'Down in Mexico' by the Coasters. _

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><p><strong>Raul<strong> flicks the cards from hand to hand, eyeing the lurid decor surrounding them. "Why did we end up here when we're squatting in a perfectly good casino?"

Charlie doesn't answer immediately, just waggles the half-empty bottle she's got gripped in one hand. "What is this again?"

"Tequila."

"Is there more?"

"If there _is_, I'm not telling you where it's buried."

"We're here because I like watching the girls." She grunts and gives him a vaguely uncomfortable look. "Or maybe find someone to get lucky with."

"Uhuh." Raul looks around again, in part to locate a wastebasket, glancing at the empty stage before turning back to Charlie. There isn't one handy, but then there's no girls for her to lose her guts on either. Probably a good thing for all parties concerned.

They're sitting in the back of Brimstone, the seedy little hole of a bar just outside of Gomorrah's main courtyard. It's somewhere past too late for her to get lucky and way too early to start trying again, those twenty or thirty minutes before dawn where New Vegas catches its beauty sleep, so the pleasant burr as he shuffles is the only sound in the room. "Alright, Boss. Let's try this again."

Charlie cocks an eyebrow and tilts her head back just far enough for one eye to peek out from under the broad brim of her hat as he deals a hand out on the faded baize in front of her, smoothly working them in among the forest of shot glasses littering the table. Raul's rather impressed her face isn't taking up that limited patch of real estate already; he's half in the bag and she's matched him drink for drink.

She looks down at the cards and fidgets, her duster making a sound like dry sand shifting. "Why can't we just go back to playing Gut-Fish."

"Sweet Maria save me, it's _Go_..." Raul rubs his face. He's been teaching her to read again, a skill that got shot to hell along with a chunk of her brains, and somehow, possibly because of the booze, tonight it's turned into a lesson in gambling. "Because you want to play for stakes again, and if you screw up with Caravan all you'll lose are some cards. Now, look at the pretty little pictures and tell me who the nice ladies and gents are."

Both of them glance up as a group of three men enter from the courtyard, dismissing them just as quickly. Flushed faces too baby-soft and wearing new fatigues with even newer stains down the front, they're obviously recent recruits fresh out of training back West. Raul knows the type; they've landed on the Strip with a fat wad of NCR cash to burn, by now they have burned _all _of it, and it should only be a short stretch of time before they realize there's nothing to entertain them here for free. There isn't even a croupier or a cashier left to harass.

"Well lookit that! I never thought I'd see one up close!"

"Man, I told you they had them here!"

"Yeah, but out front where anyone can see? This place is _sick_!"

Charlie flicks her eyes over to them and then towards what they're gaping at in a mix of slack-jawed disgust and wonder, a perfect match to their voices. Raul just keeps contemplating his cards, since it's impossible for him to stare at himself without a mirror handy. So they're not only rubes, they're apparently shut-ins.

He plays a card and gestures for Charlie to take her turn, his voice mild. "I love it when I'm their first. Makes me feel all virginal, like a nina under the table at her debutante ball."

It's the wrong thing to say, but then he's never been one to keep his words on the inside of his mouth.

The last one lets his first opinion be known again. "We didn't want..._sick_!"

"Eames, you're such a little fucking puss." The first shakes his head. Both him and the second are now staring at Charlie, who may or may not be sober enough to register the attention. Raul is, and he isn't liking it; not by a long shot. "Naw, they're part of some sideshow. I heard about this stuff back in the barracks."

"Sideshow?"

"You think Calamity Jane there is for rent? Who _would_?"

For once, Raul's actually wishing that Boone had tagged along; the uncharismatic bastard doesn't so much drink as commit self-destruct by bottle, and even as much as Charlie drives him up the wall, that little quip would have been enough to get him involved and end this burgeoning shitshow. One good look at that kind of face with _that_ beret riding atop it, scarlet as a bloody sunrise, and whatever nuggets these three are trying to pass off as their cojones would shrivel up to their lungs. Hell, even Arcade would be useful at this point, his verbose prattle could wrap just about any idiot around his little finger, or Cass and her...well, honestly, it's probably a good thing she's not here. They don't even have the dog or the flying toaster tonight. It's just him and Charlie, and as intimidating pairs go, a rumpled, rotted Petro-Chico reject and a gangly, too-tall cowgirl tomboy aren't topping the list.

Charlie decides to saddle up and join the conversation. "This is a private party, fellas."

The second leers. "Oh? Who's payin' for who?"

The first snorts and laughs, elbowing him. "Who's _pitying_ who, you mean."

For whatever reason, this finally gets her dander up, and it's damn high with the way she starts cursing. "Why don't you stuff your shriveled dicks up your shitholes and fuck yourselves off out of here."

"Why don't you start putting on a show."

Three or four slugs ping off the floor around his feet before he or Charlie realize he's being shot at, the silenced .22s not making much more than a whispered 'thup!' as they fire. Both of them jump up and back, sending chairs and glassware flying, which seems to be a bit more in line with the excitment Eames was looking for.

"That's it, dance!"

He gets a chummy nudge in the arm. "See? I told you paying that guy out front extra for these would be worth it."

Charlie tries her diplomatic schtick, although it's probably too little, too late now. "Now boys, you want to consider what it is you're doing. I really don't think the brass at McCarran is going to be happy you're trying to peg one of the Courier's friends full of holes."

"Who the fuck cares if the shuffler knows a damn postman?"

Christ. They're _really_ new. Raul glances back to Charlie, whose face has gone alarmingly blank, and he wonders if she's thinking what he's thinking; that nobody, aside from whatever poor slob here would have to clean up the mess, is going to bat an eye at three rowdy troopers killing a ghoul. Certainly not the NCR. Camp Searchlight proved that.

Raul's mind flips into overdrive, searching endless memories of gunfights and bar brawls for any good way out of this mess, coming up dry every time. They're too damn drunk to take a hack at it, too damn drunk to have managed anything through the front door past whatever pig-stickers Charlie might have managed to squirrel away. He's a gunslinger without a gun and she's a knife fighter with no chance of getting in range and a perception problem so wide that it takes a scattergun for her to hit anyone more than five feet away. There's got to be something he can do for her.

Charlie looks at him, looks at them, then suddenly puts her arms akimbo, trilling out a laugh. "Well, boys. You come to the Strip, you really need to learn how to ask the right way. I'll let it slide this time." She jerks her sleeve up and starts jabbing at her Pip-Boy. The three troopers look confused. Raul sideyes her like mad. "You want a dance, I'll give you a gods-damned _dance_!"

Right. She's drunk. She's _catastrophically_ drunk, apparently, and this, Raul thinks, is possibly the worst fucking time to realize he has no idea just what type of drunk she is.

"Boss-"

She retrieves one of the chairs and plops it behind him, hissing as she pushes him into it. "Just sit the hell down and play along, Raul."

"But-" Charlie snaps her leg up and out as he tries to get up, and suddenly he's staring down a mile of leathered thigh, the crook of her knee squeezing against his shoulder to hold him still as she punches one last button on the Pip-Boy and an all too familar song starts pouring out of it. It does nothing to drown out the hooting that's started up behind her.

She starts weaving her hips, the leather of her chaps creaking an inch away from his nose, and he makes a jerky little nod as the troopers howl even louder. Right. So. A plumb loco drunk it is. "Nice song."

She rips her hat off and sends it spinning, the thong at the end of the long braid that tumbled out joining it in short order. "Been savin' it."

"For?"

Charlie doesn't answer, just pulls away and starts to dance as a long-dead voice cuts in.

_Down in Mexicali_

It's small movements at first, little steps and twitches, everything riding on just her big brown eyes, just like their eyes are starting to ride up on her.

_There's a crazy little place that I know_

Both hands come down to spread her duster wide as she turns towards the troopers, and if the shape of her ass through the back is any indication, her hips can roll like they're on casters.

_Where the drinks are hotter, than the chili sauce_

She spins again, the long drape of her coat wrapped around one arm as her hips snap out, and if it's possible for a woman to make it look like she's tying herself up with her own damn clothes, she's doing it.

_And the boss is a cat named Joe_

Raul relaxes his legs, he can't help it, and the toe of her boot slams down in the tiny space left in front of his groin. Every single one of the men behind her jumps, groans, and if the .22 slug that just whanged into the ceiling plaster wasn't the only little load that just shot off, Raul would not be surprised.

_He wears a red bandana_

Her own comes off, and underneath is a collared linen shirt so white against her ballistic vest and honeyed skin it's a wonder she doesn't blind herself with it getting dressed in the morning, and now Raul starts thinking that she could shut her eyes, shut her eyes and _he'd _redress her when they got up, and just no, no, no.

_Plays a cool piana_

The zipper on the vest comes down slow, slow, slow, and the buttons on the shirt pop one by one, her fingers trailing down.

_In a honky tonk, down in Mexico_

Suddenly there's a shadowed pool of cleavage in front of his face that even a fish could drown in.

_He wears a purple sash, and a black moustache_

She twirls again and rolls over, legs spread out towards the troopers and her head on his shoulder as she arches her back, going up on her toes, sliding her cheek next to his. It's either the brush of her hair or a glimpse of that soft, secret space behind her ear that breaks him. Raul reaches up and runs his hands down her sides.

_In honky tonk, down in Mexico_

She's lithe and limber and he bets just all legs from the opposite angle, and she's got no damn business being sexy enough under that battered old coat to give him this much of a cockstand. _All_ of them are pushing tents, and sweet creeping _Jesus_, she just brushed her ass into his.

_Well, the first time that I saw him_

He generally thinks of her in a sisterly fashion, so what she's doing now, grinding into him with three men who want to murder him and possibly do worse to her watching, all of whom look like they're just about ready to crawl up her back and mount her like a raw-boned mare, is downright _filthy_ on so many levels he can't tally it up.

_He was sittin on a piano stool_

She's set a new bar for how much like a dirty old man he can feel, he thinks. In short order she shows him he couldn't possibly be more wrong.

_I said "Tell me man, when does the fun begin?"_

Charlie bucks her hips, grabs his right hand and slides it down to her waistband, then under it, his rough, bitten fingers interlaced with her slender ones, running over downy-soft skin and obscenely swelling out the fabric over the join of her legs for the barest of seconds before his own tighten on what she's led him to and she twists away to flick her duster out and flaunt her ass at their captor audience, wet fingers shining before she tucks them into her mouth, coat and vest hitting the ground at the exact moment they slide in. Raul isn't sure if it's the troopers moaning, or him.

_He just winked his eye and said "Man, be cool."_

Charlie pays attention to them while he spends a moment adjusting his bits and iron, swaying herself down to the floor, running her hands over and into her anatomy wherever she can reach, and basically taking every bit of their attention with it. It's not sex; it's the prospect of it that's got them caught up, him caught up. It's that glorious moment right before you get down to the business of ins and outs, that split second between intent and action, stretched out to an endless, excruciating infinity, and they have no way to stop it. It's impossible to stop without taking that plunge, and they can't, trapped on the outside of what she's doing like flies on a pearl of bitter honey.

_He wears a red bandana_

He looks back up right as she returns, fingers twitching at the front of her shirt, and there's that pool again. _It should be darker underwater_, he thinks as she swings a leg over and straddles his, boots flat to the foor as she winds her hips to keep all other eyes on her denim-sheathed ass, but it's light in between her breasts. Just an acre of perfect, smooth skin on display for him, scalded cream instead of the milky coffee of her throat.

_Plays a cool piana_

Charlie smiles, and it's a wicked, wicked thing. "C'mon, Raul. Don't stop playing now."

_In a honky tonk, down in Mexico _

The hell with it. He pushes his face down into her and inhales.

_He wears a purple sash, and a black moustache_

A mingled scent of sweat and sweet air and underneath it all the sharp tang of metal; hot, heady steel baked by the sun, the ghost of a dozen teenage sunsets spent groping in the backseat of a broken-down borrowed car. He pulls it in once, twice before its joined by the reek of booze and he sputters as it suddenly floods over the bottom of his face, stinging deep in the back of his open nose. Raul looks up. She's got the bottle of tequila balanced over the back of one hand, and the pull she just took is dribbling out over her bottom lip, catching in the hollow of her throat before it slides down between her breasts and beyond. The thought of it pooling in her navel just about kills him, so he opens his mouth to trade scent for taste, sucking and nibbling until there's nothing else left in his head. The hell with the troopers, too.

_In a honky tonk, down in Mexico_

It's blue agave from the bottle and salt from her skin, the grit of dust from a morning spent in the desert the day before and the bitter flavour of the coyote tobacco she's been chewing all night to stay alert; the taste of her mouth in his.

_In Mexico..._

The tempo jacks up and Raul runs his hand over his face as she pulls back, an attempt to clear his head that backfires like a stick of short-fused dynamite. She _definitely_ smells like that everywhere.

_All of a sudden in walks a chick_

He actually reaches after her this time as she slides away, snapping her hips in a roll, a buck towards each panting man in front of her.

_In Mexico..._

Her leg flashes out and her bootheel snaps down as she pushes out her chest, rapping hard against the mellowed tile.

_Joe starts playin on a latin kick_

The shirt comes off as she tosses her head, sweaty hair finally flying loose of the plait and there's that tied-up thing she does with her clothes again, and where, oh Jesus, _where_ on God's gutted earth did she find a black lace bra?

_In Mexico... _

Her thumb darts down into her jeans, and he wonders, he hopes, he prays as it comes back up hooked on something-

_Around her waist she wore three fishnets _

Yup. Matching set.

_In Mexico... _

This time he knows it's him who's moaning.

_She started dancin' with the castanets _

One leg slides up over the other, the conchas on the bottom of her chaps clattering against each other.

_In Mexico... _

Charlie twists and then she's on him, hips snugged to his, her ankles crossed at the back of the chair.

_I didn't know just what to expect_

She brings her face in so close to his they're breathing the same inch of air and time...just..._slows_.

_In Mexico..._

"What do you say, Raul? Reckon you can give me the time for it?"

_She threw her arms around my neck_

Raul tears his eyes away to look past her as she does exactly that. "I'll give it to you from your eleven to three."

"You sure? Ready for a thrill?"

_In Mexico..._

Her hips grind and he nearly chokes. "Good to go, boss. Give it up for me."

_We started dancin all around the floor_

"Give it and get it." Charlie brushes her lips against his ear, sucking her breath back in a sweet little whimper through her teeth, and Christ above he can feel the muscles up the inside of her thighs trembling, the damp of her down below. "Ready to get in, Mexico?"

_In Mexico..._

He slaps his hands against her ass and pulls in hard. "_Now_!" Charlie flips over backwards till her head nearly hits the floor, her arms flash out, and slim little throwing knives hit home in two out of three panting throats, standing at eleven and three of the clock precisely. Even with a dent in her brains and drunk as a skunk, there's never been anything wrong with her ears or sense of direction.

_Until she did a dance I never saw before_

He's lucky the insane little maneuver throws off the owner of the third, because it takes Raul more than a second to see straight enough to shoot his eye out with the 9mm she had strapped up the inside of her thigh. One hand still digging into the cleft of Charlie's ass, he takes long enough to make sure everyone's dead who should be and lets the pistol fall out of his hand.

_So if you're south of the border _

Everything's rushed south-

_I mean down in Mexico _

Down and in-

_And you wanna get straight _

Just carry her straight over to the nearest table-

_Man, don't hesitate_

Or just tip over straight onto the floor and-

_Just-_

Charlie flicks a button on the Pip-Boy and slithers loose of him, staying at his feet for a brief second before she's back on her own, grinning. She chuckles and presses the pad of her thumb against her tongue before reaching out to smooth it over his little mustache; first left, then right. "Slick as sarsaparilla. That was way more fun than what I had planned for you tonight."

He sits there dumbstruck as she picks up all her discarded clothes and shrugs back into them, replaits her braid and tucks it up under her hat, turning lean curves and burnished hair into lines about as appealing as a weathered board with a blackened crossbeam. That's what she should look like, and it shocks him back into sense.

"Planned? What do you mean, _planned_?"

"Well, I wanted to tell you-"

"What was this, a game to you? Am_ I_?"

"No! No, I-" Her face is burning, and it's not entirely from the drink. "So. Where do you reckon we go from here?"

Raul looks at her, really looks and _sees_.

Suddenly she's not a woman with no letters or a run-down itinerant on borrowed time, she's something more, something hot that's gotten stuck in his chest and suddenly he feels so, _so_ angry. Not angry with her, but angry that he feels. It's like a betrayal. An ambush. He doesn't let himself look any farther than that.

"Up to you, boss." Raul stands up. "Yeah. I think I'm done playing around for the night."

"Raul, wait! _Raul_!" He doesn't stop and Charlie doesn't follow. She stands there for a moment, then sits back down at the table to wait to complain and explain to whatever employee walks in first, picking up the scattered cards.

She looks towards the door again after she has them all, then starts laying out a game of Solitare, which she knows she only has half a chance of not screwing up on her own. She puts her fingers on the stock pile, gives the empty doorway one last, lingering glance, and shuts her eyes.

"Black Jack for that Red Queen. Neat as you please, please." She flips the card, opens her eyes. Joker. Of course. "_Fucking_-" Everything left on the table goes flying. "Damn the deck, and damn my rusted _heart_-"

Charlie scrambles up and starts putting the deck back together, picking her way through the blood and broken glass. It's his deck and he'll need it if she wants to get good at playing again, if he'll show her how to get good. She isn't good at this anymore. She hasn't been good at it for so long. Hasn't needed to be.

Everything feels so clumsy without him.


End file.
